time and temp

En route to Salvador this past weekend, I spent a day in Sao Paolo with a high school friend of Page’s who is from the city. He picked me up from the airport, took me to see some sights (the municipal market and the cathedral, among others), took me out for top-of-the-line Brazilian barbecue (at one of the original Fogo de Chao restaurants), and invited me along as his guest to a local university’s annual graduation celebration (an all-night gala with live music, professional dancers, unlimited caipirinhas of all flavors, and a luscious dinner spread). Essentially, I went from shooing chickens under my feet at the breakfast table Thursday morning to sharing a toast of Veuve de Clicquot with some of the most elite families in Sao Paolo Saturday night. I still have not fully processed this cross-over experience.

But let me give my readers some perspective. Sao Paolo is the largest city in South America, and nearly twice the size of New York. That alone takes a moment to process. The pace of life is fast, traffic is orderly but always jammed, and the gorgeous natives are almost exclusively clad in high-end fashion, all of them driving seemingly brand-new cars. Really, the only signs that I was not in New York were the slightly lower height of the buildings, the building materials (concrete as opposed to steel), some incredibly beautiful graffiti, and the rows of wooden shacks with plastic tarp roofs visible just over the freeway walls on the outskirts of the city – signs of the extreme economic disparity that chokes Brazil.

As I passed a lovely and comfortable day with my host and his friends, I was impressed time and time again by each extravagance. The full-table spread of delectable breakfast foods laid out by the maid was everything I wanted. The floral arrangements at the party Saturday night were larger and more beautiful than any I have seen at similar occasions in the U.S. But none of the things that most called my attention in Sao Paolo left a similar impression on my host. He commented that the party had been average, the elaborate breakfast was not out-of-the-ordinary, and the poverty-stricken outer-lying areas of the city were normal scenery on the way into town.

An outsider will always analyze a foreign culture relative to his or her own. Having grown up middle-class in the U.S., I am a firm believer that a strong middle class will maintain a society and its economy. When I see such a dramatic disparity of wealth, and it seems as though those in positions of power are not working toward improving the situation, I feel frustrated. Don’t you want to change things? Don’t you see that this is unfair?

As my flight touched down in Salvador, reality checked up on me. The flight attendant welcomed us to the city and announced the temperature, 25 degrees Celsius, and the time, 16:25. I sighed and thought to myself, “now, how much is 25 degrees in Fahrenheit? And what is 16 hours?” Then it occurred to me – after three months (along with previous time spent in Europe, Mexico, and Central America), I still have to convert the time and temperature into my own measurements in order to understand it. I simply cannot get my head around another culture’s perspective of these essential, but most basic, numerical descriptors.

It is certainly not easy to look at one’s own culture from another perspective and realize that there are parts of it that need to change. It takes an individual who can completely separate his or her self from the culture that defines the most essential parts of who they are. Furthermore, the more comfortable one feels, the more difficult it is to move. In Sao Paolo, one can easily ignore the disparate situation by avoiding public transportation or not exiting the freeway between downtown and the airport.

In a way, I see this as a personal challenge – to question my values and to try and see myself and my culture as others would. What have I been ignoring? What needs to change? And what do I have the power to do?